Another fun raiding week

I’ve been a bit quiet but that’s partly due to a lack of general LOTRO news, coupled with a busy schedule for me.  However, I did have a pretty fun week getting into some fun group adventures in LOTRO.

On Tuesday I got in another run of the 12-main raid BG which although not terribly successful I am enjoying it quite a bit.  This raid certainly is challenging and really makes folks pay attention and work together.  It also gives all classes a chance to shine as it isn’t just a tank & spank, it isn’t a DPS race, it requires lots of agro control, healing, CC, and DPS all working together.  The first part of this raid, called the Gauntlet, can get a little crazy as there are a large number of mobs with timed waves, that all have unique abilities which cause numerous problems.  There are big Uruks with huge melee range 360 degree AoEs so those need to be kept out of the group or really bad things happen 🙂  This is where the timing comes in as 2 Uruks aren’t too bad (one tank grabs each) but the third really starts to cause problems.  While the 2 tanks are playing with the Uruks (and keeping in range of the healers) the rest of the group is dealing with Wargs and Goblins.  The wargs are really annoying with fears and silences so you need to get them down first and fear/mez the ones you’re not DPS’ing.  The goblins are mainly just annoying and usually just drag those along.  The groups I’ve been with have this down relatively well, periodically individuals with die but luckily they just pop back up at the door and can easily rejoin the rest of the group.  As you can imagine with all these guys running around this fight requires good communication and gets really hard if you’re with folks who don’t have voice chat.

Once you get through the Gauntlet you come up to the first boss in BG – Durchest.  This is where I messed up on Tuesday (fixed it on the subsequent runs though) and while distracted thought I knew our plan but in fact we were doing it a different way.  The fight is challenging in that he applies a threat de-buff on the tanks that slowly overtime increasing such that the tanks are at –100% threat.  And as a timed mechanism there are adds that come out.  I’ve only been in there on my Warden so better understand that part then the add mechanic, so I’m not really going to touch on that.  But for Durchest there are 2 main ways to tank him – agro swapping, or delayed tanking.  Agro swapping requires one tank in front and the other behind with each “fighting” each other for agro such that when one is tanking, their debuff is increasing, while the other tank is building threat as hopefully his debuff wears off.  In theory then the debuff is only on one of the tanks and they just trade off during the fight.  The delayed tank method requires 2 tanks to go get the debuff (he can only have a max of like 210% debuff out at any time) and keep the debuff such that a 3rd tank can tank away with a much smaller or non-existent debuff and things go as normal.  In addition to this mechanic, Durchest has a couple other tricks up his sleeve.  First off, he hits for a TON – I’ll routinely get hit for 4K a pop and quite often back to back 4K hits.  In addition, we will as part of his script walk out and take a swing at someone in the group for that same 4k hit.  So this causes issues for the healers as someone in the group will get smacked (hopefully not while there are adds) and then he’ll come back and smack around the tanks.  Usually our trouble has come from this mechanic in that the healers can’t keep up with this or there’s an unlucky crit or something like that. And this is where Durchest gets even more annoying in that he has a huge heal when anyone in the group dies, and if it is a tank you then have huge agro issues which will usually create a wipe.  We had a fairly decent run on Tuesday but couldn’t get him down before folks had to log.  Part of the annoying mechanic in BG is that the Gauntlet will reset in 45 minutes so you only get a couple chances with Durchest before you need to re-clear that area.

So, on to Wednesday and I popped on to see what other trouble I could get into.  I responded to a GLFF looking for a Minstrel for Dar Narburg (or however you spell it) as they were working on the Blind One.  I’ve been in DN a number of times, but hadn’t done this fight so it was pretty interesting.  Not to mention that I had to re-train my brain to heal folks as opposed to tanking.  The BO is another interesting fight which no matter how much you read about it is really hard to wrap your brain around until you’re actually there.  To explain he has the potential to put a real nasty fear (might be poison, I forget) on players but the bad part is that it can spread.  So, in order to deal with this the raid needs to spread out and keep at a distance for the first phase of this fight.  Our first attempt had some positioning issues and I ended up getting too close to others which combined with everything else going on just created too much of a problem such that we wiped.  We then got that down and made it through that phase into the second phase where the real problem comes from the massive AoEs and the random holes that spawn which “stun” people trapped in them.  This combination ended up being too much for us and after a couple more wipes we called it a night.

And then last night I went back into BG with the same group I’ve been in there with the past few times.  We had some tighter time restrictions and took a bit to get started as we were short a couple so we only got 2 attempts in on Durchest.  We ended up doing the delayed tanking method and got REALLY close to getting Durchest down, but we ran into another problem I think.  We were going for Hardmode which requires you to kill 10 adds before Durchest dies, however we were killing Durchest too quickly and had to pull back on him and speed up on the adds.  I think this caused a bit too much stress and panic on the group and things just slipped out of control.  We then had a death with popped him from under 15K to back over 200K and then ran into agro issues with Durchest running wild, thus causing the wipe.  Now the interesting part of this was that after the first portion where myself and the guard each got up to the 100% threat debuff, neither of us could get back anywhere near that high.  There was a large portion of time where I had no debuff on me even though I was in the proper position.  The mechanic here is that the debuff wears off after a minute but his frontal AoE attack, when it hits, will reset the timer and increase the debuff.  The guard did have protection on me which boosts my defenses and I guess it is possible I was just really luckily in my avoidance such that he just never hit me.  But either way, it was a fun run but terribly frustrating as we got SO close to bringing him down.

Not sure how much raiding I’ll be getting into the next bit here but I really am enjoying it even though we haven’t been terribly successful.  And although BG has some annoying mechanics I really enjoy the raid and it is definitely challenging and I agree it is by far the hardest raid in LOTRO without question.  I’ll probably work to get the other couple of pieces my Minstrel needs such that I can bring him into BG as needed.

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My last couple of weeks

So I’ve been pretty quiet of late partly due to a hectic schedule at work but also a bit of a down-time in game as well.  I just have lost a bit of motivation of late but after a blast last week I should be back up and in full gear here soon.

First off, I did want to comment quickly on the WB acquisition of Turbine as I’ve been back and forth on it quite a bit.  For the most part I don’t think it will make too much of a difference but hopefully it will help Turbine with some resource issues like the Isengard Preview server.  But I think LOTRO will remain relatively unchanged with most of the changes being on the application of Turbine’s systems to other WB games.  I will also be curious to see if we see anything further on LOTRO subscription numbers, although any current statistics will be skewed by the large number of lifetime subscribers that I’m sure Turbine/WB won’t release.

I’m enjoying all the new My.LOTRO lotteries, including the new one for the rare Symbol drop for crafting 2nd Age Legendaries.  I’m sure many (including all the Euro folks) don’t like this idea but as long as they don’t do it terribly often I’m all for giving players little treats here and there.  I do also appreciate them putting the PvMP armor set barter items in the gift box item list, although I still think they need LOTS more work in this area.  I really want to get these sets but the way the Delving currently works it is quite a challenge to get things done in there.

So, on to my fun week as I was travelling some and had a good deal of un-interrupted play time from the hotel.  Tuesday night I had my first run through Dar Narburg (DN) on my Warden.  I was a little worried as I was going to be main tanking most of it but I also wasn’t the only “new” person in there so we took it rather slow and steady.  We had a couple of rough spots but did manage to get 2 bosses down and an attempt on the 3rd before folks decided to call it a night.  All in all it was a fun time and I especially enjoyed seeing these fights from a different perspective as I had only been in there on my Captain and Minstrel previously.

After that I did a pretty smooth SG run and am one run away from finishing off my Mirkwood Radiance set.  I still enjoy that dungeon, but that may just be because I haven’t run it as much as other people have.  Which is probably a good thing as my Minstrel still needs quite a few more runs in there to finish off his set.

However for me the real fun came on Wednesday night as I made my first steps in the “new” Mirkwood raid BG.  I’ve had lots of chance to go on this raid but timing has never quite worked out so I was excited to get a shot to go this week.  I did feel a bit bad as I realized I was a little under-prepared with things like food and tokens.  Needless to say, I need to get back into better habits if I’m going to continue to raid 🙂  We didn’t get terribly far but we had a fair number of new people and were pretty low on DPS.  We did manage through the Gauntlet pretty well and I quite enjoyed that series of battles.  Essentially it is a timed run through the first area of the raid with numerous kinds of mobs and timed waves.  I was set on read guard basically keeping the Uruk out of the group as not only can I keep him busy but am relatively self-sufficient.  We did have a couple of deaths in there but were able to get through it in our first pass and made it to the first boss Durchest.  We had some poor information for our first run and butchered the agro portion of it, but after that wipe was able to regroup and make a much better attempt.  We had 2 wardens and a guard near him to distribute the damage from his big attack with us working to build threat and tier up the debuff at the same time.  The main problem we ended up having was on this debuff in that at times it would appear to wear off which just created all sorts of timing issues.  And each additional add brings another 10 gloom into the picture just to make things real fun 🙂  We didn’t get him down as we had some time constraints for some and couldn’t find enough replacements.  Certainly I’m still learning the fight, but there’s some mechanic in there that’s just not obvious to me.  It also gets pretty crazy in there as you’re not only trying to build/maintain threat but clear his corruptions and keep your HoTs and defense up.  For those of you interested or looking for information on this raid here are some links that might help:

• Durchest suggestions (Warden Specific)
• Preying Mantis’ Guide to the LT
• BG Lorebook site
• More BG Strategy tips

And finally, based on some of these runs I’ve really come to realize that I need to get back into some semblance of a kinship search.  I’ve been kinless for quite a while now after leaving my last kinship but I really do enjoy running this kind of content and trying to PUG it can be challenging.  I haven’t quite decided what to do, but there are a few options I’m debating between as there are a couple of kins I’ve found, I have some good friends in both Fat Smokin Hobbits and Strayhold, and there’s been significant purging of some of the people who bugged me most in my previous kinship so I might return there.  But most importantly I think I just need to get my butt in-game more 😉

Forum re-cap

Ok, so I was catching up on the forums this weekend (pretty much a week behind sadly) and came across some good threads.  I will be covering some of these a bit later as I’m going to put out a tanking post with sections on the Watcher and DN.  But for now, I wanted to share some of them as I found some good reads:

Some good discussion on traits and the various lines, not just at end-game but trades on how to build as you level.  My personal thought is that you should get and slot the 2 +1 heal pulse traits as soon as you can and then whatever you have that actually makes sense.  Once you get more towards the end game you can start to worry more about it. (Traits from Warden Boards)

Preferred/Good gambits (Link) – big point here that I always forget is that power wise, Safeguard is horrible and I really need to stop using it.  It costs almost double the tier 4/5 HoTs (86 vs. 43/57) and 8 times persevere (tier 2).  Otherwise very similar to what I do – stack DoTs and HoTs, keep buffs up, etc.

Threat legacies (part 2)– I really haven’t had a chance to do more testing on this.  The first round LtDiablo and I did seemed to indicate they were worthless.  But maybe it is just that with all the other un-knowns it is just hard to tell.

Ambushing bosses (link) – really handy to make sure everyone gets into melee range (good for Halls of Crafting) and also helps get us on top of threat.  Also, with burgs you can still get a conj off before the daze wears off.  However, some bosses are immune to it (just like other Crowd Control) so be prepared for that.

Stuns (Forum Link) – really not much you can do about them, but some good discussion none the less.  Also, positioning can be helpful here to get out of the way.

Suggestions on tanking the watcher – (Watcher Tanking 1, 2nd Thread)  The first thread includes some good thoughts on the fight, the suggested traits, and the flow of the fight.  The second one has a bit more detailed walkthrough by LagunaD, including the things to watch for “Shakes with Anger” = back up!

Tanking the Blind one (Forum Link) – a fight I haven’t seen yet, but have heard/read a bunch about it.  Seems there are a few roles us wardens can fill for this fight, including MT.  Again, LagunaD has some good details as do a few others, including what seems like a pretty good reason to slot the fist capstone.